“I think there’s a large percentage of teachers who kind of have this quiet angst about how they’re being treated,” he says. “I think I’m fairly typical. It’s just that I’m maybe not smart enough to keep my mouth shut.”

In fall 2009, counselor Patricia Scott went to her bosses at El Paso’s Bowie High School with what turned out to be a very dangerous question: Why was somebody erasing credits from the sophomores’ transcripts?